Carriers
Carriers

Carriers

KDDI to Launch U.S. Operations

This article by the Asahi Shimbun, stating that KDDI will launch services on Sprint Nextels network, has created alot of buzz across the web in the last 24hrs. According to that story the company “… has obtained a business license to serve as a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) in 49 of the 50 U.S. states”. While of course it makes perfect sense to us for KDDI to consider how they might port the lessons learned here into other developing markets, the details provided from this original source raised more questions than they answered. The Asahi quotes un-named officials, no announcement appears on either of the carriers websites, saying that “KDDI Mobile” will begin offering full-scale services in the U.S. by mid-April.

Japan Mobile Subscriber Statistics

The Telecommunication Carriers Assoc. (TCA) released their official updated Japan mobile subscriber details (see graphic on our left nav.) for the month ending March 2007. While we had mentioned several times recently that March is the traditional handset replacement month, even WWJ was impressed to see the volume of activity achieved. KDDI’s AU brand continued to show the way with a net increase of 530,000 while DoCoMo, with their latest models line-up becoming more widely available, added a respectable 298,000 new contracts. SoftBank Mobile reported a total gain of 127,000 compared to only 63,000 year-on-year for March 2006 when the company was still running as Vodafone. By far the most interesting numbers relate to the continued migration towards 3G.

High-Quality Speech Coding for Mobile

DoCoMo just announced that it has developed speech coding technology, in collaboration with their research labs based in Palo Alto, which will enable better voice quality for mobile phones, yet only requires the low-level computing power of conventional mobile technologies. This new approach apparently targets a wider frequency range of 50Hz – 16kHz, which is approximately the full range of the human voice. By comparison, the frequency range of legacy services is limited to 300Hz – 3.4kHz. There’s a few fancy graphs on this .PDF to demonstrate the performance range.

Emobile Launches Mobile Broadband

Emobile launched its so-called “Mobile Broadband” services, 16-months after the ministry awarded their new license, at an opening ceremony held at Bic Camera’s Yurakucho store in Tokyo this weekend. The company put two debut models on sale: its keyboard-equipped EM ONE terminal by Sharp (details here), which allows users to connect at HSDPA speed and view 1Seg digital tv broadcasting, and a card-type model for laptop computers.

DoCoMo's i-channel Hits 10mln Subs

Adobe just announced that DoCoMo’s i-channel news and information service, powered by FlashCast technology, has surpassed 10 Million subscribers in Japan. DoCoMo hit this important milestone just 18 months after the launch. The rapidly expanding data service is delivered through 25 channels to almost 20 percent of all NTT DoCoMo customers. i-channel allows subscribers to automatically receive five basic channels, including news, entertainment, weather, horoscopes and sports.

DoCoMo's New U.S. Advisory Board

DoCoMo announced today that it will launch a fourth U.S. Advisory Board, which will hold its first meeting in the United States on April 11, 2007. The board will be chaired by former United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman Michael K. Powell, currently chairman of the MK Powell Group and senior advisor of Providence Equity Capital, and will include Dr. C. Fred Bergsten, founder and director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, who served as chairperson on two previous boards.